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Turn MTA-STS back on

email.mta_sts.mode_none · effort: about an hour

Why it matters

mode: none switches the policy off, so senders go back to delivering mail without requiring TLS. This is normal while retiring MTA-STS but not if you want the protection.

Staged change. Do this in stages and check each one before the next, so a mistake does not break your site or your mail.

The fix

  1. If MTA-STS was deliberately turned off, leave it. Otherwise change mode: none to mode: testing, add the mx: lines for your MX hosts and a short max_age (86400), and change the id in the TXT record.
  2. Replace the mx lines in the snippet with your own MX host names, written exactly as they appear in your MX records.
  3. Publish a TLS-RPT record, watch the reports for a few weeks, then move to mode: enforce (see the testing-mode fix).
mta-sts.txt
version: STSv1
mode: testing
mx: YOUR-MX-HOST.example
mx: *.YOUR-MX-DOMAIN.example
max_age: 86400

Read the documentation (opens in a new tab)

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